Filling Your Head With Junk, etc.

I’ve been reading your comments this week. Interesting, in all your lists of really bad movies, I only saw six that I like: WHORE, CATWOMAN, AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH (be serious, now), WAR OF THE WORLDS, A CLOCKWORK ORANGE and WHITE KNIGHTS (not great, but I enjoyed it).

. . . Also, I’ve read some defenses of the show, THE VIEW. I’m with you on that. The first time I saw The View, by accident, in a hotel, I had no idea what I was looking at, but it seemed really fresh and different and spontaneous. I mentioned before that my mother watches it, but since Elisabeth Hasselbeck has been on, I can’t stomach having it on at all. However, the addition of Rosie O’Donnell may be improving things.

From Tek Jansen: Still boggling that you’ve never caught a single episode of the Simpsons (Seinfeld, et al), Mick, some time throughout the 85 years they’ve been on the air, plus syndication. Is it to avoid spending valuable time getting caught up in the seasonal continuity of episodic TV, or to avoid getting pop culture references tangled up in your movie criticism, or what?

Mick: No, it’s not those things. I just don’t want to fill my head with junk. I didn’t see how going around saying yadayadayada was helping the people around me, so why join the club? Sure, there’s good junk, but to say, “I choose to fill my head with this junk, because it’s better than that junk” is to presuppose that, just by virtue of living in this period of history, you have to choose junk. I think of it like a purity thing. And also a recognition that life is not forever. There are 90 years of great feature movies to choose from, not to mention all the books that you can never get around to reading, and centuries of great or at least interest music to hear — and only a limited amount of leisure time. Why waste it on something that’s not going to enhance you?

Having said that, I know that some time just has to be spent being wasted, if only to create the omnipotent sense that you have more time than you have. It works that way with money sometimes, too. But this idea that leisure time should be one big waste — I can’t enjoy leisure like that, past a certain point. It’s like letting your head get invaded by lots of chattering and nonsense. I frankly feel kind of invaded that I even know who Sanjaya is, even though just now, typing his name, I started laughing. Anyway, it’s a trade-off, but I’d rather err way, way, way on the side of abstinence. Plus, don’t forget, I get more than enough pop culture from movies.